E37: Lisa Phillips: Your 9–5 Can Be Fuel: Using Your Job to Fund Real Estate
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Release Date: 01/12/2026
E40: How Founders Build Trust Before Raising Capital
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
McKeever “Mac” Conwell, Founder and Managing Partner of Rare Breed Ventures, joins Planet Wealth CXO Mary Katherine Johnson to break down how he went from a government contractor in Maryland to launching a venture capital fund built for overlooked founders. Mac shares the unconventional path that shaped his investing lens: dropping out of school for a Northrop Grumman opportunity, building and exiting a startup through pivots and accelerators, and then entering state-backed investing where he helped design a first-of-its-kind pre-seed program for women and minorities. This episode is a...
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E39: Dr. Felecia Froe: How to Invest When You’re Scared (Because Everyone Is)
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Dr. Felecia Froe, board-certified urological surgeon turned social impact investor, joins Mary Kathryn Johnson of Planet Wealth for a candid conversation about building wealth with purpose. As the founder behind Money with Mission and Wealth Be Hers, Dr. Froe shares how her path from medicine to real estate investing became a mission to help women gain the financial power to walk away from jobs or relationships that are not in their best interest. After reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, Dr. Froe began buying real estate and rapidly scaled to 18 properties. Then 2008 hit, and she lost everything. What...
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E38: Joshua Kagan: Locked Out of Real Estate? Why Land Is a Smart First Step to Owning Real Assets
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Joshua Kagan is a real estate and fintech builder focused on expanding access to ownership for everyday people. He is the co-founder of Bonfire and the founder of Friendly Acres, a land-focused venture designed to help people exit stranded land assets while creating affordable pathways into real asset ownership. In this episode of Fortunes of the Brave, Joshua shares how his journey from fix-and-flip investor to fintech founder reshaped his views on democratized access to real estate. Drawing on lessons from launching Bonfire during a volatile regulatory moment, he explains why land has...
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E37: Lisa Phillips: Your 9–5 Can Be Fuel: Using Your Job to Fund Real Estate
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
In this episode of Fortunes of the Brave, host Mary Kathryn Johnson sits down with Lisa Phillips, founder of Affordable Real Estate Investments, to unpack how she went from foreclosure to financial independence using affordable rental properties. Lisa is known for helping overlooked investors, especially Black professionals, build profitable real estate portfolios in working class and minority neighborhoods using low cost, high cash flow strategies. Lisa shares how she realized corporate America was not her long term path and reframed her engineering job as a paycheck to fund her real...
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E36: Pamela Cytron: Wealth Isn’t Just for the Rich: How Fintech Is Changing Who Gets a Shot
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Pamela Cytron, founder of The Founders Arena WealthTech accelerator in Arlington, Texas, has spent more than three decades at the center of fintech, wealth management and enterprise sales. In this episode of Fortunes of the Brave, Pam and host Lance Woodson dig into how wealth is really created, who gets access to it, and why the current system leaves so many founders and everyday investors on the sidelines. They unpack the broken incentives inside venture capital, the realities of raising capital in fintech, and why sales is still a contact sport even in an AI driven world. Pam explains how...
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E35: Bridging the Wealth Gap: Founder and Investor Lessons from 2025
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
2025 closes by revisiting the most practical lessons shared by founders, investors, and community builders across this year’s Fortunes of the Brave conversations. This recap threads together a single theme: better decisions happen when your mindset, strategy, and community support are aligned. First, we return to a mental framework for entrepreneurs and investors who feel the pressure of constant uncertainty. A five-step system called PEACE outlines how positive thinking, embracing challenge, appreciation, certainty, and empathy can reduce fear-based reactions and improve decision quality....
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E34: Michael Scarpati: Rethinking Retirement For The Rest Of Us
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
For too long, retirement planning and independent fiduciary financial advice have felt reserved for the top 1 to 2 percent. In this episode of Fortunes of the Brave, Mary Kathryn Johnson sits down with Michael Scarpati, CEO and co founder of Retire.us, to unpack how technology and true fiduciary financial planning can finally open the doors for everyday Americans. Michael shares how his platform connects people with independent fiduciary financial advisors who focus on holistic retirement planning, not just selling products. They dig into the mindset barriers that keep people with 50,000 to...
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E33: Dan Egan: The Behavior That Builds Wealth
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Mary Katherine Johnson sits down with Dan Egan, VP of Behavioral Finance & Investing at Betterment, to decode how our habits, narratives, and timing drive financial outcomes more than hot tips ever will. Dan explains why success comes from matching risk to time horizon, building automatic systems that spare your willpower, using tax-aware prompts (hello, long- vs short-term gains), and reframing money from a scarce enemy to a tool you can wield responsibly, and often with your community. We dig into teachable moments that stick, how to design routines that “pay yourself first,” why...
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E32: Nick Malouin: From Chaos to Clarity: How Innovators Turn Uncertainty Into Action
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Mary Katherine Johnson welcomes Nick Malouin, Senior Strategy Director at Electric Innovation, to unpack how innovation strategy turns ambiguity into action. From Capgemini to Electric, Nick has spent a decade taking ideas from insight to in-market—bridging hard data with human truth so teams can build products people actually want. He breaks down why the best work starts with the consumer journey, not the org chart; how to separate signal from noise with out-of-category insights; and why “possible futures” beat single-line forecasts. If you care about product development, consumer...
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E31: Janice Shade: How Community Capital Moves Money from Wall Street to Main Street
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Community capital, crowdfunding, and local investing take center stage in this episode of Fortunes of the Brave. Systems entrepreneur and financial innovator Janice Shade, co-founder of Milk Money Vermont and founder of Capital Innovation Lab and Fundamenta, joins host Lance Woodson to unpack how everyday people can invest in the small businesses that define their hometowns. From her early days at Seventh Generation questioning the “green premium” to designing new models for Main Street investing, Janice shows why traditional capital markets leave most founders and communities...
info_outlineIn this episode of Fortunes of the Brave, host Mary Kathryn Johnson sits down with Lisa Phillips, founder of Affordable Real Estate Investments, to unpack how she went from foreclosure to financial independence using affordable rental properties. Lisa is known for helping overlooked investors, especially Black professionals, build profitable real estate portfolios in working class and minority neighborhoods using low cost, high cash flow strategies.
Lisa shares how she realized corporate America was not her long term path and reframed her engineering job as a paycheck to fund her real business: affordable real estate investing. She walks through buying an overpriced Las Vegas property at the top of the 2006 market, losing it to foreclosure, and then rebuilding by targeting sub 30k and 30k to 60k homes in lower income but stable areas. Instead of chasing luxury flips, she focused on out of state real estate investing, long distance rentals, and using time as her ally to renovate and stabilize properties on a modest budget.
From her first 13k Baltimore house to assembling a portfolio across multiple cities, Lisa explains how investors without generational wealth can start small, live on less, and use each corporate paycheck to buy freedom. She breaks down the mindset shifts required to let go of ego, status, and the belief that your first deal has to be 50k or bigger. One house every 18 to 24 months, in the right market, can change a family’s financial trajectory.
Lisa also opens the door to global real estate investing, sharing how she now lives part time in France, uses her home as a primary residence and short term rental, and why getting a local property manager is essential when investing across cultures and continents. If you have ever felt “overlooked” by traditional wealth advice, this conversation will show you a practical path into rental properties, no matter your starting point. Listen to this episode of Fortunes of the Brave to learn how to use small, strategic moves to build big, long term freedom.
Key Takeaways:
• Reframe your day job as a paycheck to fund your real business or investments
• Start with low cost rentals in the 30k to 60k range instead of waiting for a perfect big deal
• Use time as your advantage by renovating slowly and avoiding rushed, high risk projects
• Drop ego and status so you can use “layaway” style strategies and modest steps to build wealth
• Apply long distance investing systems to both out of state and international real estate
Chapters:
• 00:00 - Welcome to Fortunes of the Brave with Lisa Phillips
• 00:41 - From corporate burnout to a 40 by 28 retirement goal
• 02:51 - Corporate America as a paycheck to your real business
• 03:43 - Growing up low income and doing “whatever it took”
• 06:29 - The first 13k house and rebuilding after foreclosure
• 08:31 - Being forced to invest outside your city on a modest budget
• 11:17 - Overlooked investors and why traditional advice misses them
• 14:20 - Layaway, Klarna, and dropping ego to start small
• 17:23 - Designing a plan for one house every 18 to 24 months
• 20:40 - Taking the strategy global and investing while living in France
• 23:43 - Short term rentals, property managers, and European market realities
• 28:42 - Systems for long distance and out of country investing
Resources Mentioned:
• Book - The Millionaire Next Door
• Book - Millionaire By 30
• Affordable Real Estate Investments (Lisa’s company)
• Concepts - Layaway, Klarna and modest step investing
• Lisa’s upcoming book on long distance investing (states and global)
Connect with Lisa:
• LinkedIn: Lisa Phillips
• Other: Instagram, Twitter and YouTube under “Affordable Real Estate Investments” or “Affordablerei”
• Follow Planet Wealth:
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